Since all of you take the time to give us your suggestions and recommendations, and a lot of you ask me for mine, I figured we might as well cut out the middle man and get some equality here. Yeah!

Of course, I can't suggest everything or even think of everything to suggest. So you're welcome to ask questions here... but I won't help you design anything. You can work that out yourself. >_>

Now, for my first suggestion, I'd say you lurkers better get into gear. Things are gonna heat up quickly.

Secondly, some suggestions for new people, present and future. First off, welcome to SWVIII. Next, you start with 50,000 credits... and you don't need to spend it all at once. And don't feel pressured to join a faction. If you choose to, they'll welcome you with open arms... but it's not absolutely vital.

Now, there are some caveats. By starting with 50,000 credits, you can't exactly buy a fleet of Star Destroyers. There is a small freighter available for 25,000, and I'm sure that given a little time, something even more economical will come along.

You can start with a blaster or something, but you have to pay for it. You can have a house on a planet, though provided it's nothing silly (like a fortress protected by a million turbolasers ). Just a nice, normal house...

So, anyone have a question? _________________
Supreme Commander of the Central and Southern Galactic Segments, Director of Imperial Intelligence

Sorry, it would seem they're still on VII. Nevertheless, they've still been in force.

Please check the new post in the Rules thread. I thought we remembered to transfer that one publicly.

EDIT: Just thought of something. I know no one likes being caught flat-footed in battles, or having the enemy avoid their impeccable defenses. I know I don't. Still, it's a good idea for everyone to have their bases and defenses set up and pre-planned. The days of saying "Oh, well... my guns are right under the incoming enemy transports" are over. I gotta know where your defenses are for battles.

Also, CMAC is toying around with a four-part battlesystem. First part, and most arduous is the full-blown system with specs, vectors, formations, coordinates, maps, and the works. If you choose this, I will not like you. The next option is similar to the auto-resolve system of EaW. It's strictly number-based, and generally speaking, the stronger force win. Of course, for this one, all concerned parties must agree to it... not the one with the bigger force.

Option three is a mix. It's numerical, but goes turn to turn. Kinda like the KotOR RPG's old system. Finally, there's the RP option wherein a consensus is reached between the battling parties. Now, I caution you now... once you make an agreement with the other player and CMAC, it is set in stone. You cannot change your mind, decide to push the offensive anyway, or whatever. It is a serious contract and breaking it is tantamount to godmodding.

And godmodding is very, very bad. You don't wanna do that. _________________
Supreme Commander of the Central and Southern Galactic Segments, Director of Imperial Intelligence

Still, it's a good idea for everyone to have their bases and defenses set up and pre-planned. The days of saying "Oh, well... my guns are right under the incoming enemy transports" are over. I gotta know where your defenses are for battles.

Would you like us to send you our defences/standing orders and the like?

I'm not sure I can pre-plan ground defences for all my planets, when you consider I have no knowledge of major cities, terrain, continents, etc...

Most faction leaders get quite angry when you spend their funds without them being consulted. _________________
Supreme Commander of the Central and Southern Galactic Segments, Director of Imperial Intelligence

Those take a x5 damage multiplier when attacked by Stormtroopers, Imperial Army, or IntelForce._________________
Supreme Commander of the Central and Southern Galactic Segments, Director of Imperial Intelligence

It seems my original diatribes about fighters and Clone Wars ships were slightly in error. While you can't shoot down an Executor or an ISD with a lone A-Wing, nor hope to go one-on-one with an ISD using a Munificent-class frigate (and it certainly wouldn't blow away an Akula in one shot as someone once claimed)... they do actually have their uses.

Fighters, of course, are quite effective in numbers. Which is not to say that everyone need to pack a million fighters into their fleets... that is bad. Which of course brings me to obscenely huge fleets fighting all at once.

It doesn't work, folks. You need coordination--stepped levels of command--to do that. Simply having one guy in the fleet and going all gung-ho is bad. First off, it's damaging OOC: you and you alone get to organize that mess. And every time, it's the same. Giant guns first, then at the end it's all frigates and loose fighters. Now, I'm not gonna tell you how to fight or organize because that's not my place, nor is there one guaranteed tactic for every situation. But put some thought into this stuff, please... attack in small, nimble groups instead of giant monster fleet apparently being coordinated by magic, the Force, or some naked girl stripping on the side of the flagship or whatever.

And before someone says anything about giant death-ray defense stations... if I find assault fleets decreasing in size and lunacy... those little death-balls may start to disappear. >_>_________________
Supreme Commander of the Central and Southern Galactic Segments, Director of Imperial Intelligence

I can't log onto my John Kiles account for some reason. It says that either the password or the username is incorrect. Can you check it and email me the username and password (Using the email listed under that account)?_________________Grand Admiral Derek Brand
Commander of Krytocracy Naval Forces

So, time to explain a couple things. First up, the Battlesystem Gearshift Mechanism.

At the moment, there are two "gears." First is "flanking," which is the faster of the two. It's a direct use of the old MGLT system, where one MGLT=2 kilometers per second. It's very fast... too fast as I've said before. A Y-Wing strafing an ISD would have ten milliseconds to fire. You cannot react that quickly.

So, flanking "gear" is used for rapidly closing distances (or opening them) or for applications where great speed is necessary (breaking orbit, for example). Of course, with the massive speed boost comes several key disadvantages. First off, with all power going into the engines, weapons cannot be fired while in this mode. Secondly, you cannot maneuver--straight-line paths only. This makes you a very easy target, so use this function wisely.

The second gear is "combat speed." This is the default function and standard velocity, acceleration, maneuverability, and functionality. If you attempt to perform any action while in flanking gear, your ship will automatically decelerate to the same MGLT factor in this gear and proceed.

Anyway, now it's rant time. Why does everyone have this Heavy Turbolaser fetish? You do know what that leads to, right? This thing called a "Death Star"? Lots of heavy turbos... only shot down one fighter? Yeah, now you remember...

Bear in mind, most SW combat is based off of World War II naval and aerial combat. So, I'll borrow some WW2 naval architecture analogies:

Heavy Turbolasers: Main Battery on large ships. These are your 14-18 inch guns. The big bastards for dueling other big ships. Useless as shit against anything that flies short of making giant flak cannons (or water cannons, as the Bismarck attempted).
High-yield Medium Turbolasers: Common heavy armament on cruisers, middling armament on larger craft that carry it. 8 inch guns, basically. These are good guns.
Mid-yield Medium Turbolasers: Secondary batteries on heavy warships and heavy armament on light warships. Good for anti-fighter defenses, though they still suffer from accuracy issues. CR90s have a good example of a mid-yield MTL: the H9 turbolaser. Five inch guns, essentially.
Low-yield Medium Turbolasers: These are more specialist weapon systems... there's no good parallel with real-world weapons aside from maybe a 3-4 inch gun. These tend to be used for planetary bombardment batteries due to a higher rate of fire or medium-range anti-fighter guns.
Light Turbolasers: 20-40 mm cannons. Rapid-fire, meant to kill fighters and missiles and any dumbass that actually gets close enough to get sprayed with it.
Quadlasers: Four laser cannons fire-linked to spray as many death-rays as possible. Decent for close-range defense. Its analog is a multi-gun machine-gun turret.
Laser Cannons: Machine guns. Pure and simple... spray and pray. Rapid fire, low-damage (but still effective).
Blaster Cannons: The weakest gun. This is a 30-cal machine gun... quickest rate of fire, though usually not enough to offset low damage compared to laser cannon. Still, they have their uses.

Get it? _________________
Supreme Commander of the Central and Southern Galactic Segments, Director of Imperial Intelligence